[raw_anon_1111]

It’s been well over a decade and 5 jobs ago that I had to sell myself on my coding ability even though coding has always been part of my job.

I’m going to keep getting a job the way I have for the past decade - my ability to use my now 30+ years of experience between development, 10+ years of leading architecture projects and being able to deal with the business and disambiguate and solve XYProblems. AI has changed nothing about the value o bring to the company. Now I just do a lot of the implementation drudgery myself faster or that I would have delegated to other people.

[gaws]

Are you not concerned with ageism?

[raw_anon_1111]

I was 46 when I got my first and only job at BigTech, I was 49 when I was Amazoned and had two offers, a side contract and a former coworker who is now a director at a well known non tech F500 company who was willing to create a role for me to be over their cloud migration and modernization strategy.

I was 50 the next year when I had a job within three weeks after spending a year at the shitty company I chose (I wanted to stay in consulting and didn’t want to work at $bigCompany again). I just responded to an internal recruiter who reached out to me a couple of days prior (dumb luck).

I’m much more worried about the state of the industry and current employment market which affects people of any age.

My other secret weapon is that I found out from a former manager/now friend that most non Black people have no idea how old a Black guy is once he shaves his head and face. Like Bill Burr said I think it’s the lotion…

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/OCC_XS-fQa0

And my resume only hoed back 10 years